24/6

In his new book 24/6, Matthew Sleeth connects Sabbath-keeping to social justice. Here’s a taste of a recent essay based on the book:

The Bible is about peo­ple try­ing to have a rela­tion­ship with God while exist­ing in a fallen world. Yet in our twenty-first cen­tury cul­ture, we’re not con­tent just to live in a fallen world: we’re putting rocket boost­ers on our backs to accel­er­ate our descent. And because our rela­tion­ship with God is inter­twined with how we care for cre­ation and for our global neigh­bors, when we don’t spend enough time with God, all our rela­tion­ships are adversely affected. . . .

The Sab­bath was not meant to be saved by human­ity; rather, human­ity was meant to be saved by the Sab­bath. I know from first-hand expe­ri­ence. After prac­tic­ing the Sab­bath for almost a decade, I have seen how it has saved me from the dis­ease of worka­holism. It has saved count­less num­bers of my patients from the phys­i­cal, emo­tional, and spir­i­tual con­se­quences of unremit­ting stress. If prac­ticed reg­u­larly, the Sab­bath can save you, too. . . .

Indeed, the future of our planet may very well depend upon Sab­bath rest. The 24/6 life allows us to see the earth not as an object for con­sump­tion but as a sub­ject for rela­tion­ship. It reminds us that God made the earth to meet every generation’s needs, not just one generation’s desires.

In 1973 the Washington Post suggested that the evangelical left could "shake both political and religious life in America." In the end, it did not. While progressive evangelicals shaped the culture and living habits of millions, it did not take shape electorally in the way that the Moral Majority did. This first comprehensive history of the evangelical left, to be published in September 2012 by the University of Pennsylvania Press, explains why.